Tag: United States Department of State

Just minutes after 35 jihadists crashed through the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, nearly one year ago, the facility got word to the State Department, FBI and Pentagon that terrorists were attacking, according to a forthcoming book that provides the fullest review of the assault to date.

In “Under Fire, the Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi,” it is revealed that an unidentified security official in the Benghazi compound protecting Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens messaged the U.S. embassy in Tripoli: “Benghazi under fire, terrorist attack.” Stevens and three others died that night.

Twenty-five minutes after it began, the operation center at State received an electronic cable announcing the attack, according to authors Fred Burton, a former State Diplomatic Security agent and Samuel Katz, an author and expert on international special operations and counterterrorism.

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President Perpetual Campaign Mode recently dismissed as phony the numerous scandals swarming around his administration. Weasel Zippers has news of one heroic American who fought alongside the SEALs in Benghazi. Is he “phony” too Mr.president?

David Ubben, a State Department diplomatic security agent who was gravely injured in the terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is in the Walter Reed medical center near Washington, D.C., recuperating from injuries that almost cost him his right leg, but until Friday was kept out of reach of reporters.

Fox News established contact with Ubben at Walter Reed, showing only his blurred-out face in a still photograph during a television broadcast.

But members of Congress say they are still meeting resistance from the State Department, which is reportedly stonewalling them and denying them access to Ubben, who is still on the federal payroll and can’t speak about his Benghazi experience without clearance from State.

Why would the State Department attempt to silence him? While we may not know the whole story, we certainly know that they are likely covering something up. Yes, there is something phony alright, and it is stinking worse every day.

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Doing research on Benghazi, and writing about it makes me sick. It makes me sick that our country, for whatever reason left Americans to die in Benghazi. No doubt there is plenty of blame to go around and no doubt we all want to know the “why” in Benghazi. I could accept if we had sent help, and it did not arrive in time. I can accept failure, what I cannot accept is failure to try. Again, we can point fingers at the CIA, the State Department, the White House, but that “why” keeps showing its ugly face. Then there is the “where” question, as in where was our president? No matter who you blame, CIA, State, whoever, the ultimate blame lies higher. Stacy McCain is also troubled by the matter of “Where”

Unlike Chris Wallace, most in the press corps have been willing to accept the administration’s non-answers, so that we are left with what Rich Lowry has called “a blank spot” in Obama’s presidency. And to invoke the famous words of the former Secretary of State, what difference at this point does it make? Perhaps not much to civilians stateside, who might be tempted to dismiss the whole affair as another political kerfuffle in Washington, but it means a great deal to those who devote themselves to serving their nation overseas. Just ask Kevin Norton.“It’s bothered me ever since it happened,” the 36-year-old former Army captain says of the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack. “It makes no sense at all.”Norton served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Third Infantry Division in 2005, and was reactivated for deployment to Afghanistan as a combat adviser in 2009. Like every other American soldier, Norton was trained to “leave no man behind.” He summarizes the common understanding of troops under fire: “Everybody knows that if the s—t hits the fan, they’re going to do whatever it takes to get you out of there.”What happened in Benghazi, Norton said in a brief telephone interview, was an “egregious violation” of that basic promise our nation makes to its courageous men and women who put their lives at risk to serve America in potentially hostile foreign countries. Although it appears Ambassador Stevens and State Department aide Sean Smith were both killed before any U.S. forces could have rescued them, the same is not true of two former Navy SEALS, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Both of them were part of a security detail that tried to save Stevens and Smith at the consulate, and were tasked with evacuating other Americans after the initial attack. Woods and Doherty were killed in a subsequent assault on the CIA annex in Benghazi. More than six hours elapsed between the first alarm from the consulate — “We’re under attack, we need help, please send help now” — and the attack on the annex in which mortar shells killed Woods and Doherty. By 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, Secretary Panetta was told of the desperate crisis in Benghazi and, about an hour later, Secretary Clinton called CIA Director David Petraeus to coordinate a response. Exactly why that response was insufficient to save the lives of Woods and Doherty remains hotly disputed. . . .

Please go read it all. The question of “Where” I believe will lead the the answer to the question of “why”. Why did America turn its back on Americans fighting for their lives? Why did we not even try?

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PJ MEDIA – The former diplomats inform PJM the new revelations concentrate in two areas — what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi and the pressure put on General Carter Ham, then in command of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and therefore responsible for Libya, not to act to protect jeopardized U.S. personnel.

Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft.

Hillary Clinton still wanted to proceed because, in part, as one of the diplomats said, she wanted “to overthrow Gaddafi on the cheap.”

This left Stevens in the position of having to clean up the scandalous enterprise when it became clear that the “insurgents” actually were al-Qaeda – indeed, in the view of one of the diplomats, the same group that attacked the consulate and ended up killing Stevens.

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He added that he and his colleagues think the leaking of General David Petraeus’ affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell was timed to silence the former CIA chief on these matters.

Regarding General Ham, military contacts of the diplomats tell them that AFRICOM had Special Ops “assets in place that could have come to the aid of the Benghazi consulate immediately (not in six hours).”

Ham was told by the White House not to send the aid to the trapped men, but Ham decided to disobey and did so anyway, whereupon the White House “called his deputy and had the deputy threaten to relieve Ham of his command.”

The White House motivation in all this is as yet unclear, but it is known the Ham retired quietly in April 2013 as head of AFRICOM.

“This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with. It’s hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.”– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sept. 14, 2012, while standing over the caskets of the four Americans killed at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya

Quite obviously, it makes a very important difference to Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) in their tireless efforts to convince Americans that Obama’s foreign policy is working, and especially to persuade us that the fine public servants at the top levels of the State Department did nothing wrong in the Benghazi affair.

The pathetic nature of the Democratic Party is astounding, but, they are what they are. Morality? Patriotism? Justice? Putting country first and finding out the truth? How dare we expect such upright principles from the Democrats!

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John Kerry, who threw his fellow servicemen under the Vietnam bus, and threw medals away, and Michelle Obama, who was never proud of her country until her hubby ran for president are going to honor a Jihadi wannabe.

On Friday March 8, Michelle Obama will join John Kerry at a special ceremony at the State Department to present ten women the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award. The award, says the press release, is given to “women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for women’s rights and empowerment, often at great personal risk.”

Five of these awards are being given to women from Muslim-majority countries, underscoring the unique plight of women in those countries. The only problem is that one of the women to be recognized is an anti-Semite and supports the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Samira Ibrahim, as the State Department’s profile describes her, “was among seven women subjected by the Egyptian military to forced virginity tests in March 2011.” The press release further notes that Samira “was arrested while in high school for writing a paper that criticized Arab leaders’ insincere support to the Palestinian cause.” Apparently, the State Department is unaware of her other convictions.

On Twitter, Ibrahim is quite blunt regarding her views. On July 18 of last year, after five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed a suicide bombing attack, Ibrahim jubilantly tweeted: “An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.”

Ibrahim frequently uses Twitter to air her anti-Semitic views. Last August 4, commenting on demonstrations in Saudi Arabia, she described the ruling Al Saud family as “dirtier than the Jews.” Seventeen days later she tweeted in reference to Adolf Hitler: “I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.”

Well she quotes Hitler in support of genocide. Clearly this deserves a State Department award.

Ibrahim holds other repellent views as well. As a mob was attacking the United States embassy in Cairo on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, pulling down the American flag and raising the flag of Al Qaeda, Ibrahim wrote on twitter: “Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning.” Possibly fearing the consequences of her tweet, she deleted it a couple of hours later, but not before a screen shot was saved by an Egyptian activist.

In other news, Michelle Obama has never been prouder of her country than this moment.

So, once again, we are forced to ask. Is Team Obama this inept? Or, are they aware of this swine’s hatred for Jews and Christians? Neither answer gives anyone any confidence in the moral compass of Team Obama.

This email was sent to State Department officials, White House officials, Secret Service officials at 6:07 PM EST on 9-11, from Benghazi officials the night of the terrorist attack.

This was at least the third email sent to the White House the evening of 9-11 on the Benghazi attack.

Barack Obama was meeting with his security team in the Oval Office that evening.The email clearly blamed Al-Qaeda linked group Ansar al-Sharia for the attack on the US consulate.
This was before the lifeless body of Ambassador Stevens was dragged from the consulate ruins.

Fast forward three-and-a-half months…
Today Barack Obama told David Gregory on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the US is has a good idea who carried out the Benghazi 9-11 terror attacks.Reuters reported:

The United States has some “very good leads” about who carried out the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador in September, President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Obama told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the United States would carry out all of the recommendations put forward in an independent review of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed.

“We’re not going to pretend that this was not a problem. This was a huge problem. And we’re going to implement every single recommendation that’s been put forward,” Obama said in the interview, referring to security issues identified in the review.

“With respect to who carried it out, that’s an ongoing investigation. The FBI has sent individuals to Libya repeatedly. We have some very good leads, but this is not something that I’m going to be at liberty to talk about right now,” he said.

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The Obama administration apparently had all the information they needed to warrant serious upgrades to our security in Benghazi, especially one 9/11. An August 16 cable even notes that there were Al Qaeda training camps in Benghazi and that the RSO in the State Department didn’t believe the consulate could be protected with current security staffing. So why did they not act?

Read below because there’s a lot more in this article:

FOX NEWS – The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.

Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.

“RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound,” the cable said.

According to a review of the cable addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Emergency Action Committee was also briefed “on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi … these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to ‘Takfirist thugs.’” Each U.S. mission has a so-called Emergency Action Committee that is responsible for security measures and emergency planning.

The details in the cable seemed to foreshadow the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. compound, which was a coordinated, commando-style assault using direct and indirect fire. Al Qaeda in North Africa and Ansar al-Sharia, both mentioned in the cable, have since been implicated in the consulate attack.

In addition to describing the security situation in Benghazi as “trending negatively,” the cable said explicitly that the mission would ask for more help. “In light of the uncertain security environment, US Mission Benghazi will submit specific requests to US Embassy Tripoli for additional physical security upgrades and staffing needs by separate cover.”

As for specific threats against the U.S., the cable warned the intelligence was not clear on the issue, cautioning that the militias in Benghazi were not concerned with any significant retaliation from the Libyan government, which had apparently lost control in Benghazi. A briefer explained that they “did not have information suggesting that these entities were targeting Americans but did caveat that (there was not) a complete picture of their intentions yet. RSO (Regional Security Officer) noted that the Benghazi militias have become more brazen in their actions and have little fear of reprisal from the (government of Libya.)”

While the administration’s public statements have suggested that the attack came without warning, the Aug. 16 cable seems to undercut those claims. It was a direct warning to the State Department that the Benghazi consulate was vulnerable to attack, that it could not be defended and that the presence of anti-U.S. militias and Al Qaeda was well-known to the U.S. intelligence community.

This says it all doesn’t it? This administration KNEW, they KNEW! They LIED! And Americans DIED! And that number would have been higher had it not been for Woods and Doherty! And ultimately, the responsibility lies with Barack Obama! And further, anyone who knows the facts here and still votes for Obama next Tuesday does not give one damn about America frankly!

The Obama State Department withdrew a 16 member special forces team from Benghazi one month before the deadly attacks on 9-11. Lt. Col. Andy Wood was the leader of the 16 member special forces team whose job it was to protect US personnel in Libya. His team’s mission ended in August a month before the deadly Al-Qaeda attack on 9-11. A six member mobile security team was also withdrawn around the same time. This was despite the fact that there were over a dozen attacks in the country this year. Lt. Col. Wood was subpoenaed to appear at a House committee hearing this coming week. Wood told CBS News it was unbelievable to him that the State Department withdrew security when they did because of the 13 security incidents before 9-11.

The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urging countries to take effective steps “to address and combat such incidents.”

No member state called for a recorded vote on the text, which was as a result adopted “by consensus.”

The resolution, an initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), is based on one passed by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Geneva last spring. The State Department last week hosted a meeting to discuss ways of “implementing” it.

Every year since 1999 the OIC has steered through the U.N.’s human rights apparatus a resolution condemning the “defamation of religion,” which for the bloc of 56 Muslim states covered incidents ranging from satirizing Mohammed in a newspaper cartoon to criticism of shari’a and post-9/11 security check profiling.

Critics regard the measure as an attempt to outlaw valid and critical scrutiny of Islamic teachings, as some OIC states do through controversial blasphemy laws at home.

Strongly opposed by mostly Western democracies, the divisive “defamation” resolution received a dwindling number of votes each year, with the margin of success falling from 57 votes in 2007 to 19 in 2009 andjust 12 last year.

Obama refused to sign the Keystone agreement last week. Today Canadian Prime Minister Harper told Obama that he would look to Asia to sell its oil.The Republic reporteed, via Free Republic:

Canada’s prime minister says he made it clear in a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama that Canada will step up its efforts to sell oil to Asia since the Obama administration delayed a decision on an oil pipeline.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada will continue to push the U.S. to approve the $7-billion Keystone XL project. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada will continue to push the U.S. to approve the $7-billion Keystone XL project. Last week the U.S. State Department ordered that the pipeline be rerouted and subject to further environmental review, delaying a decision until 2013.

Harper says the U.S. move highlights why Canada must increase its efforts to diversify its exports to Asia. He says he communicated that clearly to Obama.

A new report from a watchdog group shows that the number of limousines owned by the federal government rose by 73 percent during the first two years of President Obama’s administration. The State Department was the recipient of the most new luxury vehicles.

See, Obama and his administration ARE about being one of the people. As long as “the people”ride in limos of course. I wonder if all those tires on all those Caddies are properly inflated? Hmmmm

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has told the United Nations that America’s human rights record is less than perfect while stressing that the U.S. political system has built-in safeguards that promote improvements.

In its first-ever report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on conditions in the United States, the State Department said some minorities are still victims of discrimination. Despite progress in reforming past unfair policies and practices, the report said “work remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all.”

Is he really this stupid? Does he have any idea that America is eons past the UN in respecting human rights?